Object Permanence
by Thatdamnscamp
Summary: Object permanence: the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed (seen, heard, touched, smelled or sensed in any way). When nothing in your life remains constant what happens when the one thing that does pisses you off above all other things? (A Craig x Kenny fanfiction)


**Object Permanence**

 _Chapter 1_

I was eight the first time I ever saw him die. It happened so quickly, and no one even reacted. It was normal for everyone surrounding me, to go on about their business not even really mourning his death. So, I pretended it didn't phase me either. It was normal for no one to ask him how he felt the next day, or acknowledge that any of it had even happened. So, I did the same thing. I acted like I didn't care, or like it didn't make me curious; it did, however.

Death became a focal point for me, and he became a fascination.

One that I was slightly ashamed of, but a fascination none the less. Too bad his friends were assholes and he himself as a singular person was a fucking narcissistic prick. I might've been inclined to act upon my curiosities back then. I didn't though.

Whenever he died I would look away, or just shove my hands in my pockets and leave. I pondered over many questions inspired by him on my own, all the while hiding how much it irritated me that no one seemed to give a fuck. Then again, this town was pretty fucked up and as much as it irritated me, it didn't surprise me.

The first time I ever asked him what death was like, I was 9.

We had our ups and downs as acquaintances. Some days he liked me, some days he considered me a friend. Some days I wanted to be the cause of death on his obituary, some days I couldn't stand his voice, or his fucking face; and he felt appropriately in response to my loathing. We had no reason for it, it was just how we were.

I remember everything he told me that day.

We were sitting outside the school on a bench after detention had let out and we were just watching the sun set. I don't really remember why, but I'm going to assume it was because neither of us wanted to go home. He had a pretty shitty home life, and mine wasn't the best either. My family would rather flip each other off than to say I love you, and they'd rather make snide or snarky comments than to proclaim being proud of their kids, or each other.

I didn't start the conversation in the most orthodox way. I wasn't too good at filtering things I said. I was always pretty up front about most things. I still am. I remember kicking the ground with my tennis shoes and mumbling, "You're not dead yet."

I remember the air getting heavy between us, I remember seeing him visibly tense and his eyes shifted away from me and he seemed to duck down lower in to the hood of his shitty orange parka. I waited what seemed like forever before he seemed to make a resolution of some kind. I remember hearing him snort back a resigned laugh before replying with a simple "The days not over." It was odd, for a nine year old to say something like that.

I remember how dense the air seemed to hang after I let the second question roll off my tongue and fall from my lips. So dense in fact, it was like if you took one good breath, just one, all the air in the world would be gone. "What's it like to die?"

He was quiet for an extended period of time and I began to wonder if he was going to answer this time. He shoved his hands in to the fur lined pockets of his parka and gave a small shrug. "It's kind of like falling asleep...but backwards..." He began and I was a bit confused by his statement. "Instead of slowly and then all at once, like how you fall asleep, death is more of...an all at once thing and then slowly...at least for me, but who knows if it's like that for everyone." I remember not saying anything in response, just nodding and saying I had to go home.

That night he was shot in the head from across town. Don't ask me how that shit happens to him, it just does. Sometimes, I wonder if they based those shitty Final Destination movies on all the ways this prick has died.

I remember mulling over his words trying to imagine what it felt like...what falling asleep backwards really felt like. I wondered if it felt different every time depending on how he died...my fascination with him should have lost its glamour like most fascinations kids had, but it really didn't. I'll admit it shifted to the back of my mind after a while and I didn't think about it as often, especially after he and his four friends insisted on occasionally including me and my friends in their shitty escapades.

I still remember the time we all thought he wasn't going to come back. His three douchebag friends were holding a contest to try and replace him and I remember asking why the fuck it was so important and why they thought they could just replace someone they had claimed so effortlessly to be great friends with, with someone they rarely ever even acknowledged. They just told me to stop being an asshole like they always did. Fucking hypocrites.

Granted I didn't last long in their shitty contest, but I didn't really care. The whole thing pissed me off. It wasn't like I cared for that bastard or anything, I just thought it was fucked up how quickly they wanted to replace him, how they never even remembered how he died, or that he had died at all. I remember going out to his grave and kicking at the freshly turned up dirt. I remember, wondering why I was the only one that could seem to remember him when he was gone. I looked down at his head stone solemnly, the engraved words "Kenny McCormick" etched in to the stone like his face was in my mind. It pissed me off.

My hands were shoved in my pockets and I just stood there. It was like I expected him to rise up like a fucking zombie in those crappy ass horror movies. But he didn't. It got cold, and I left. I was thinking about death again, and about how I had just assumed that Kenny was immortal the way smaller kids assume their parents wouldn't ever die. Now that he really was gone I didn't know what I was feeling, or if I felt anything at all. Some sick part of me was disappointed with him. I mean after all the shit he had survived, muscular dystrophy? Seriously?

I remember that night more vividly than any other because it wasn't only the night that Kenny became the last thing on my mind, it was also the first night Thomas came home super drunk. He and my mom got in to it and the screaming was so bad it woke Ruby up. She came in to my room and I told her that everything would be okay. I tried convincing her that mom and dad were just playing a game to see who could be the loudest.

She believed me, and was able to fall back asleep. I felt like an asshole. I wasn't doing anything to make things better, they were only getting worse. Not that my family had ever exactly been the "lovey-dovey" type. My parents rarely ever spoke and when they did it was always cynical. Violence had never really been a thing though, at least, not until Thomas started hanging out with Randy more. Then everything went to shit.

I remember one night he didn't show up until after dinner, and when he did, he was sloshed. He stumbled in to the living room and ordered Ruby and I to go up to our rooms. Ruby did, but I hung out on the stairs. I watched him grab my mom and throw her against the wall, he was right in her face screaming and yelling about how she was a bitch and how she was emotionally inept...the more I watched, the more I got pissed off. He of all people should talk about being emotionally inept, he of all people should accuse someone of being a bitch. Whenever I tried to tell him about anything important in my life he ignored me and at best I got an "Oh." Response from him.

I don't even remember walking down the stairs, but the next thing I knew I had shoved him back and stood in between him and my mom. I told him to fuck off, and...he didn't like that too much. He grabbed me and lifted me in the air. He was shaking me, and screaming at me about respect and how I was the shittiest kid he could've asked for, and how I was a disgrace of a son, and at one point I felt my head hit the closet door.

After that I could vaguely hear my mom screaming for him to stop and I remember fuzzily seeing her slapping his shoulder trying to get him to drop me. He just kept slamming me in to the closet door over, and over, and over...I never thought it was going to end, I remember him saying "No, I'm his father and he's going to learn to respect me!" And that's when it happened...that's when my mom said-

"You're not his father! You're not his father, and you have no right to touch him!"

He dropped me after that.

I remember running upstairs, so scared that he would grab me again. I remember running to my room, and locking the door behind me. My blood was rushing in my ears and my adrenaline was pumping through me uncontrollably. I remember being so terrified he was going to follow me, he was going to break my door in...but he didn't and I eventually calmed down and slept that night despite him and my mom fighting in to the early hours of morning before a door slamming woke me up.

I sat up listening hard to see if my mom was okay without me actually going downstairs. I didn't have to wait long however, she came up to my room and slowly entered. She looked exhausted and her eyes were puffy from crying. I watched as she slowly made her way over to sit on my bed. She ushered me close to her side and wiped her eyes free of tears. She offered me a meek smile in an attempt to comfort me when all it did was worry me.

She sighed and finally explained that just before she got with Thomas to marry him she had had an affair, a one night stand during her bachelorette party. She told me that the man she had slept with that night was my real father. She told me she was actually pretty surprised Thomas hadn't had questions before given the fact that I looked nothing like him and only had a few traits of her in me.

I had learned from my parents how to walk through life without conveying feelings, without appropriating adequate responses to situations by acting deadpan, and stoic to everything. I remember sitting there feeling numb, and for once I didn't know how to respond to what she was telling me. I didn't know how to deal with the fact that the man who I had, for so long thought was my father was suddenly a stranger, I didn't know how to react to the knowledge that Ruby was only my half sister...I didn't know what to think of my mom.

I was angry with her. I was angry that she had lied to me, that she had lied to all of us for so long. I was angry that she could so effortlessly lay beneath some random guy the night before getting married to someone she supposedly loved enough to marry and get pregnant by some low life and act as if she had done nothing wrong all these years. I thought about how she always acted so high and mighty.

The more I thought about it the more my body grew cold with anger, and then, I just felt something snap inside me. I shut down. More so than usual. The moment I heard her ask if I understood what she was saying, I clenched my fists and I told her to get out of my room and go fuck herself.

I remember her expression growing cold, her eyes growing distant, and I remember vaguely thinking if what I had said was too harsh. You could almost imagine the sound of glass shattering in place of her already worn down and cracked self esteem in reaction to what I had said with such vocation. As if my words had been the baseball thrown through the proverbial window of her heart.

She didn't yell at me, she didn't reprimand me for my language, she just stood up and walked slowly from my room, shutting the door behind her, leaving me alone in silence to brood over how much my life had already changed with just a single sentence. How none of this had been my choice, how I hadn't even had a choice. It wasn't fair, none of this was fair, and the only ones to blame were those surrounding me. All these fucking adults who thought they were such hot shit, so put together and perfect, but when it came down to it they were all useless, lying, self indulgent pricks. None of them should've had kids, none of them should take care of kids, but here we were and there was nothing we could do to change that other than suffer for their mistakes.

Thomas stayed gone for a week, I don't know what he did, or where he went, but when he came back he was more distant and colder to me, and the rest of our family than usual, which was a pretty big fucking accomplishment. The only thing that had changed were his drinking habits. He didn't drink as much anymore. He and my mom rarely spoke to one another, and he slept on the couch more than he did in the bed with my mom. I wondered why they didn't just get a fucking divorce. The only thing I was thankful for is the screaming contests in the middle of the night had stopped. The silence that replaced them however was eerie and heavy, like watching something fragile about to hit the floor with no way of stopping it.

Things seemed to settle in to a comfortable awkwardness, Thomas and my mom had even started sleeping together again. We also began to establish a resentful, yet permanent family act. Thomas was still a complete prick to me, but that was to be expected, what did he have to offer me when he wasn't even my dad? Things seemed resolved...at least, until Thomas started hanging out with Randy again, and soon after things went to shit all over again. He had been drinking one night and had come home with the intent to fuck my mom I'm sure, but as she was undressing he caught sight of a drone. One that had been filming my mom undress.

He drunkenly accused my mom of knowing the drone was there, of enjoying undressing for it, he began to scream horrible accusations at her asking if Ruby was even his daughter, if my mom had married him for what little money he had so that she could pretend to be a stay at home mom while slutting around. I remember hearing him stomp down the hallway and in to my sisters room, I remember bolting up out of bed because even if I was pissed at my mom, even if Ruby was only my half sister, I was going to be fucked before I let that bastard touch either one of them ever again.

When I got in to the room he had Ruby by the shoulders and was shaking her spitting in her face as he yelled at her to tell him whose daughter she was, as if she even knew what the fuck was going on, or what his drunken ass was talking about. I pushed past my mom who was standing stiffly in the doorway not doing a goddamn thing to stop him. I remember grabbing him by the shoulder and when he turned around and pulled my fist back and punched him as hard as I could manage. I felt his nose pop beneath my knuckles and blood spurted from his nostrils the flow of it enhanced by his drunken state. I remember yelling at him to leave Ruby the fuck alone. He did. He did only to direct every ounce of his rage to me.

Ruby ran across the room to cling to my mom as Thomas turned on me backhanding me so hard I felt my ear pop, in my stunned state he pushed me back against my sisters dresser. I remember struggling with him grabbing his hands and pushing them off me, wrestling with him as much as I could; remembering some of the moves Cartman and Kenny had taught me before my fight with Tweek if you could even call it that.

He stepped back for a second and pulled his belt from his waist and began striking me with it, screaming over and over "Do you think you're a tough guy?! Are you tough now!?" I couldn't do anything, except let him hit me. I couldn't push him off, all I could do was sink to the floor and curl up screaming for him to stop, screaming for my mom to help me, I don't even remember why, I knew she couldn't-knew she wouldn't.

She instead turned away with Ruby and left the room to go downstairs. She left me with Thomas. She left me to be beaten until he had worn himself out and stumbled from my sisters room to pass out in the guest bedroom. He had managed to black my eye, bloody my nose, and had effortlessly knocked a remaining few of my baby teeth out. When I could make sense of my surroundings again I slowly pushed myself to sit up, and then to stand. My mom made her way back in to the room with a sleeping Ruby in her arms. She calmly told me to go to my room and began scrubbing my blood out of my sisters carpet.

The next day my moms nudes had been leaked all over town.

The next four years of my life consisted of me getting in to fights with other kids, getting in to fights with my mom, getting in to fights with Thomas, covering up bruises, dealing with sprains, making excuses for marks on my body, being in detention all the time, and dealing with that prick Mackey all the god damn time. I just wanted everyone around me to go away and leave me the fuck alone. I just wanted to exist. Everything everyone said either pissed me off, or made me realize I didn't care about much of anything anymore.

I either reacted in two ways, cynically or violently. There were no grey areas with me, and all I could think about wanting was a normal family, to live in a normal town, and have a normal fucking life. That wouldn't ever happen here in South Park though. I learned that much in elementary. I swore on the last day of my eighth grade year that I would leave South Park and I would find a way to take Ruby with me. If my mom wanted to choose Thomas over us I would let her, but I wouldn't let her drag my little sister down with her.


End file.
